Happily, not due to export business alone, the German manufacturing industry for meat – processing machinery owes its excellent upward trend but, increasingly since 2005, to domestic demand as well. The capital – goods sector finally got really going in 2006. Nobody is talking any longer of an investment block, but of how it has dissolved. This applies indeed to numerous segment of the machinery – manufacturing industry, and particularly to food machinery. Orders received for food machinery for January to October 2006 were up 21% on the level of the previous year. Orders from Germany and abroad were more or less equal. For meat – processing machinery VDMA special statstics give an even more positive picture of domestic demand : cumulated figures for the first three quarters of 2006 show domestic orders up by 38% and orders from abroad up by 10%